


Coda:

by briteskies



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: M/M, NSFW, PWP, Post-Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-02
Updated: 2015-10-02
Packaged: 2018-04-24 10:45:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4916518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/briteskies/pseuds/briteskies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>: something that ends and completes something else.<br/>: something that serves to round out, conclude, or summarize and usually has its own interest</p><p>This is set to follow immediately after the season 3 finale where shots were fired, people got stabbed in the face and there was an actual cliff involved. It was an emotional roller coaster of a day for everyone and it doesn't just end in the water.  Time for some stitches and emotional release...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coda:

**Author's Note:**

> subtitle: unrealistic expectations of what the human body can probably endure

There would be peace in death. And in that single moment, mere heartbeats that spanned eons, he saw and bid farewell to the life that was no longer his, and was content.

If this was his ending, it would be a grand and lovely thing. 

If it was not, then what else was there now but the world? 

So with a long and almost satisfied exhale of breath he closed his eyes and felt no fear in the fall. 

Fear was long behind him now. Fear had come crashing through the window. Fear had been bleeding on the floor. Fear had been cut open, ripped and torn, and it had been good to feel its life spill and seep and splatter to the ground, thick, wet, hot, and choking on its own wretched sound. Fear would have a hard time finding him now. 

But it was death that never came. 

There was peace, yes. In the caress of the cool air tasting of saltwater sea, with silver stars and a haloed moon on the wrong sides of the horizon. And in the solid warmth of arms that were around him when the ground slipped away.

Then there came the rush. The cold stinging slap of gravity reminding him how much the universe didn’t care. Then swirling, choking darkness and pure panicked instinct that crawled out of the back of his mind like a parasite that threatened to takeover it all. 

But sometimes, instinct is all that there is. All that you are.

It's best not to fight it. 

It’s in the body’s best interest to stay alive, after all. Even if your mind thinks you’ve decided otherwise, the body was designed to do everything it can to continue. To live on. To survive. It’s a basic drive so deeply ingrained into your primal core that your limbs begin to act before your conscious brain can even conjure the words “fight or flight.” There is no _think_. Only _react_. 

Overhead the Dragon was dead and Will Graham swam in the sea below. Cold, deep and turbulent, the sea bit into him in no way that was pleasant. It stung like it may as well have been pavement that had decided to swallow him whole. Bitter harsh water seeped into every tender spot on his body and gave him the throat-filling urge to scream. But he couldn’t. Wouldn’t. No. Because all around him was water. Swirling endless black. With no bottom, no top, no sides to be found and he would need all he had left to find the right direction of the world. 

Such simple things as up and down had been very convoluted tonight. Although little more than always, truth be told. And somehow it seemed fitting that it was now, when everything was its darkest and any direction could be the wrong one, he felt a distinctive pull. Even in the fall, Hannibal had kept for himself a fist full of Will’s shirt and used it to tug him through the water, first by the fabric and then by the arm. Soon enough, there was moonlight on the other side of the water. 

The first new breaths on the other side of this life were wretched and painful. Caustic in his lungs. Burning and biting at the flesh of his new future scars. 

His body had never felt so tired as it did when he finally collapsed on the shore. Half a mile away from the cliff where he began, the beach was more sharp rock than sand. They would have to climb to get out of the tidepools. But at least they would not have to climb a cliff. A small bank of eroded landside and familiar New England foliage. 

But he did not have the strength in him to climb. If he’d had anything left, the swim to shore had taken it out of him. The rocks may have been sharp and uncomfortable, laying in the shallows with the waves crashing in, but they felt like heaven then. The tide was rising as the moon pulled harder, but it was the demon of sleep which called to him louder than all the others. He was distinctly aware of his pain. The shoulder that had stained his white shirt a saline-rinsed pink and the side of his face he couldn’t even bare to touch. 

“Was this the ending you had pictured?” Hannibal’s voice comes from so nearby that he can feel it vibrating in his own lungs. In the relative safety of shore, they had yet to fully unwind from one another. They had come this far together, neither one of them letting go. 

“Yes.” It’s an easy enough answer although he takes a moment to ponder. There had been several endings that he had thought possible. Was this the one that he had wanted? 

He knew he couldn’t say with any real honesty that it wasn’t. 

\-------

The next clear memory he has, there’s the sound of running water. 

Dim light.

Sunlight.

The smell of disinfectant. 

“I’m only going to clean you up, Will,” Hannibal’s voice is even, calm and easy. As if he’s trying to keep Will in that state of mind as well. “This may cause you some discomfort, but far less than should you develop an infection. I need you to stay with me.”

He blinks and slowly realizes he’s been more than half asleep, fighting someone behind his eyelids that is no longer real. When he blinks again, he finds reality and that it’s Hannibal’s hands that hold him steady.

Will is tired, damp and worn. The aches of the day have settled inside his very bones, but it’s a very clear sort of pain. He can point right to where it hurts the most, even though there isn’t a spot on his body that doesn’t feel sore. But it isn’t all unpleasant. Like the soreness a runner might feel after a challenging marathon, his muscles ache with a pain that he’s worked hard for. He’s earned it, and the burn is almost nice. 

Its as if Hannibal can see the light turn on in his eyes. Will was finally awake.

No.

Will was finally _home_. 

Right then and now, home was the second story bathroom of a tourist condominium overlooking the northern Chesapeake as steam poured out of the hot running faucet that was slowly filling the tub. 

“We’ll need to stitch your cheek. But first, I would like to see your other injuries and mend you all at once. You’ve injured your shoulder. Are there any other places we should worry about?” there reads genuine concern in his clinical approach and he cradles one side of Will’s face while his eyes study the other, as if assessing the real damage caused. 

There was concern in his face but not the deep lines of worry. Will guessed that he’d be going through life with a decent sized scar but the damage would be cosmetic. Another one for the list. But everything still felt like it worked. Smiling might not be pleasant for a while. And his back cast was going to be stiff for some time to come, as would lifting heavy things with his right arm. The rest was just varying severities of bruises that would fade away in time.

“Do you think you can manage your shirt?” his eyes flit down to the buttons still fastened below his throat. 

He can, but he’s stiff and despite the vigorous saltwater cleanse, there’s still the dark sticky stain of blood. Assistance isn’t necessary, but it does make it easier. When it’s finally pulled away, Hannibal tosses it directly into the waste bin at his side and continues on with his examination. 

He himself looks little worse for wear, already changed into fresh, dry linens. Will imagines a thin layer of bandaged white around his ribcage beneath the soft fine fabric of his shirt. Already mending. His eyes are bright and alert, his motions smooth and calm. Relaxed, it occurs to Will. If his own injuries bother him, he doesn’t let it show. His attention is laser focused on Will as he begins to clean and swab at his wounds. 

They go through plenty of gauze and alcohol. The thread that holds his broken skin is a lovely bloody crimson. Each stitch hurts exactly as expected, but it’s over soon enough. The steam from the running water was finally starting to cloud the room and he almost feels dizzy. Cloudy as if drunk.

“Don’t submerge your stitches,” Hannibal instructs, then adjusts himself as if he means to stand, “You’ll want to keep them dry if you can.”

And when he does stand, it’s to turn off the water faucet and gesture to the bath. “I’ll finish dressing your wounds after you’ve finished.”

He doesn’t linger long after that. Only smiles briefly at Will before gathering up his make-shift doctor’s kit and closing the door behind him. Dawn is on the other side of the window and Will is keenly aware that he’s said no more than five whole words. That final click of the door latch seems to reverberate around the room far longer than it should.

He’s alone now in warm, safe, perfect silence and he doesn’t quite know what to do.

It’s been a lot to process and his mind can’t quite settle on one place, it wants to examine them all. But the bath does seem like a fine enough idea. It smells of sea salts and lavender, calm and waiting to be used. So, Will stumbles out of the rest of his clothes and settles himself down. The water is perhaps only a degree above perfect and there is the distant call of birdsong. 

The heat does pull away some of his soreness. It feels nice, but also… strange. Strange to feel such comfort in such an unfamiliar place in a day that was already new. And in this comfort, his mind easily wanders. Wonders if it should be so easy to fall into all of this. 

It had seemed so much heavier at the edge of the cliff. The closer he got, the longer he went on, the more like Hannibal he became. And now he had crossed lines, had been witnessed crossing them and had been fully embraced on the other side. Had he lost himself completely or had he merely found the final pieces that had been missing?

He doesn’t mean to, but he sleeps. He dreams not only of things that might have been but things that might now be. 

It’s only for a little while. Soon enough there comes a rap at the door that pulls him back to the world without having realized he’d even been gone. The water is still warm, but cooler and Hannibal has returned with bandages and orange juice in long stemmed flutes. 

“Have you allowed yourself to relax?” he wonders when he lets himself inside.

Still quiet, Will says nothing but he does turn his head and allows himself to smile because there is definitely a part of him that that is pleased. It earns him a smile in return. 

Hannibal seems, by all accounts, delighted. His new freedom had come, by his own admission, with everything he had wanted. And now here he was, tucked neatly away in accustomed comfort, sipping orange juice and champagne past lips that had so recently been drenched with blood. 

Will tastes his own and the sting of citrus and iron coats the back of his throat. He swallows it down gratefully.

“I thought you might be finished by now but instead, I find you dozing. Are you really in such a hurry to drown yourself?” Hannibal is teasing of course, lips curled into a smile. 

“Well, it’s been a long night,” Will believes he has a very compelling argument.

Everything in the room seems to have a gilded, golden hue in the early morning light and Hannibal stands, towering above him, looking down. There were times when Will might have felt vulnerable, intimidated, maybe even frightened by that thought. But right now it felt...normal. As if the two of them being right there right now was the most simple and obvious thing in the world. 

“I suppose you’re right,” he concedes. “I’ll give you more time, if you need.”

But Will shakes his head. “No. I think I’ve spent enough time in here.”

“You haven’t washed your hair.”

It is still stained of saltwater and blood, dried in crusted curls. Figuring out how to wash it without submerging his freshly stitched shoulder and cheek turns into an immediate challenge. 

It takes all the time to tip his head back into the water and lift it back up again for there to be two hands on his shoulders. They land with such calculated gentility that is sends shivers down his spine. Hannibal seats himself in the same chair he’d used to stitch him up in, already rid of his long-stemmed glass. 

“Forgive me Will, I did not consider your current disadvantages,” but he doesn’t mean that at all. He does not ask, does not offer, just does, with fingers disappearing into the dark wet curls of Will’s hair. They scratch at the nape of his neck and begin to knead gently against his scalp. 

His touch is anything but professional. Intimate, personal, with an uncharistic reserve of tenderness that is saved only for Will. The shampoo smells of spice and sandalwood and the bubbles tickle his ears, and he knows that when Hannibal looks back on this memory they will both be in a room full of golden light; incandescent among a thousand candles in an elegant room filled with pillars and tapestries and ornately painted steeples. This would be his baptism in the halls of God’s great church.

“Tip back your head,” he says, but doesn’t need to. The fingers that tilt at his jawline guide Will’s gaze almost directly upward and the clouds of sleep that had fogged his head before were being overtaken by something else. An itchy almost nervousness he cannot seem to name. 

_Anticipation_. 

It comes when fingers slide down the line of his elongated throat. He can feel his own pulse flittering beneath them. But Will can’t be sure if he’s feeling this emotion purely on his own or if it’s merely a reflection of Hannibal’s that’s scorched him so deeply it burns beneath his skin. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference. 

So, he concentrates on the sensation of warm water sliding over his skin. It slips and drips down the coils of his hair as Hannibal pours water from a silver tin cup across the top of his forehead. Then, he works his fingers against his scalp again as he rinses him clean. 

Will closes his eyes. 

“Doesn’t that feel better?”

“Much,” he agrees. 

“Well then…” 

Will’s eyes are still closed, so he only feels him move above, stretching out. Reaching. A metallic click and then the sound of water being let down the drain. He never finishes the thought. Instead, he turns his attention back to Will and the small towel he’d brought with him to dry off his hair. 

The warm water that had cocooned him had made him feel less naked than he was. And now, he could feel it slipping away, each passing moment making him feel more and more exposed. Yet, that feeling of nervousness and anticipation has hardly gone away. It’s why he keeps his eyes closed. He doesn’t feel prepared to meet Hannibal’s gaze and learn how much he sees. He knows that he does.

Hannibal fluffs a towel around his head just long enough to get the water to stop dripping from dark curls, then tosses it aside in favor of white gauze and strips of medical tape. Dressing for his shoulder. Dressing for his cheek. Will Graham is all clean and stitched and shining in the morning light as if covered in pearls of dew. 

“How do you feel?” Hannibal asks when he finally hands him a towel. He doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to leave.

“That’s a pretty heavily loaded question right now, don’t you think?” Will knows that’s not the response he’d wanted, but he sometimes delights in denying him the satisfaction. 

That earns him another smile, a quirk of his brow, “Is it?”

“You know it is,” Will is somehow both accusatory and shy. He stands and towels himself dry, straightens his shoulders and then actually answers, “I feel fine.”

It’s a surprising truth in the middle of a lie. Yes, he’s exhausted and his face hurts and his knees ache and his ribs are sore and there’s an ache in his arm that seems to go all the way to the tips of his fingers. But compared to what it could have been, it was almost superficial. What he felt now was, _complete_. As though he had finally crossed the finish line of a race he had been competing the whole of his life.

This had been his true becoming. And he steps out of the bathtub and onto the rose marble floor and stands now as who he truly is. 

“I’m sure you do. But you should finish your orange juice. It tastes best when chilled and the vitamins will promote quicker healing,” that the drinks have been laced with opiate painkillers is inferred but never said. Hannibal then tips back the last remains of his own with his smile still tucked into the corners of his mouth. But his eyes never leave him. No. They drink him in. Slowly. Never lingering in one particular place for long, but most certainly not keeping in the polite direction of his face. 

Passively curious, but… curious. 

Will drinks as he’s been recommended. 

“So, is this just more of your inconvenient compassion?” he gestures with and to the glass, almost teasing. But he is also curious what he’ll do. At no point has he made any real attempt to hide himself.

Hannibal’s smile darkens with the shadow of a predatory glint, but there is also a subtle, knowing delight when he asks, “Is that all you want this to be?”

No. It’s not all he wants. And Will takes one slow but purposeful step closer, closing what little space remains between them. Although he says nothing, he looks straight into his eyes and lets that answer stand on its own. So much has already been said between them. So much was still left unsaid. There was so much of everything that surrounded them now, that to finally have nothing comes as a relief. No space at all between them. 

The kiss is anything but gentle. Aggressive. Passionate. Fierce. And Will groans because it actually hurts like hell on fire, while simultaneously being everything that he needs.

“You would come with me then?” there has been no mention of a destination, but Will knows what he means. 

He could turn back. Walk away from all this. Even still, even now, there were steps that they could take to give Will back his life. Send him home to Virginia with his wife and his child and his pack of rescued dogs. But that was a life he had made without room for Hannibal, because he thought that was what he had wanted. And he’s already lived that existence long enough to know that so long as he was alive, Hannibal would never be truly gone. Wouldn’t it be so much easier, so much better, to ride the winds of the hurricane rather than try and fight them, if the storm was going to blow through, regardless? 

“As long as that’s still what you want.”

“I believe there has been a part of me that has wanted this from the start,” and Will knows that probably isn’t needless prevarication. He means that. And he can feel Hannibal’s breath filling up his chest, feel the brush of his lips as he speaks against the delicate skin of his temple. He can even feel his heartbeat, strong and powerful beneath his ribcage, and Will knows that its significant. His heat rate barely altered when his own life was in danger, but it was pounding in this moment. 

It occurs to Will for the first time that it might not only be himself that was questioning reality. In the years spent wandering the halls of his mind, how many times, how many ways had Hannibal envisioned this happening? And now it was all playing out in his hands. 

He doesn’t take a step away from him, but rather guides Will along. Away from the space of the bathtub and the growing morning light of the room with an almost polite touch at the elbow; his thumb pressed at it’s delicate hollow. “You will need your strength, if we are to run. I mean to set a quick pace and your body will need its rest if you plan to keep up with me.”

The connecting room is dim. A moderate sized bedroom with it’s heavy, dark curtains drawn. Pale cotton sheets are already turned down and a single stemmed candle flickers on a bedside table; this room has already been prepared to receive him. Or, them, as the case may be. 

Will walks as far as the edge of the bed, but there, he lingers. Discards the towel and the empty champagne flute from his hands and then, he closes his eyes. The memories of this day were still vivid behind his eyelids and the song of sleep was calling. Exhaustion was only doomed to set in. But there are also arms around him. The slight trickle of warm breath against his ear. 

“I don’t know whether I am to wish you goodnight, or good morning.”

“You act as if you’re trying to say goodbye,” there’s amusement in his voice, knowing that it had really been more of an expression of how much he wanted to stay.

“I’m done saying goodbye to you, Will.”

It’s a beautifully charming threat. One that is followed by a trail of kisses from earlobe to the dip in his clavicle that has already been covered in bandages. Hannibal looms almost oppressively over him, embracing him from behind. His exploratory fingers become more daring as they begin learning all the new places they’d been granted admission. 

For some time, that is how they remain. Quiet and intimately serene. They stand together, slowly but purposefully memorizing new maps of skin; touching, sensing, feeling their way as if they’d somehow been blinded. It leaves them feeling dreamy, buzzing, electric. One tiny spark and there would be a full blown, raging fire. 

Beneath his weight, the mattress gives. Envelops him. Draws him in. It’s much softer than his own back home to almost an extreme. Will lays down on his back, his head on a downy feather pillow, but finds himself covered almost immediately. The warmth is all consuming and tangles itself around him, winds its fingers around his throat and leaves him writhing breathless, wanting. 

To love is to be consumed by the intimate need for another. Obsession is not knowing how to stop. It could be as infectious as disease, creeping in like a fever that melted all rationality. It was almost overwhelming. The sensations and emotions that bombarded him, his body in both agony and delight, while his heart was somehow heavy and on fire. The experience only compounded by his empathy. When he breathed, the air in his lungs was Hannibal’s and when he would move his hand, he was touched. There were two hearts now beating in hollow of his chest; the final few lines between them were all but completely blurred.

It must be the great act of balance in the universe that such violence and such tenderness could be the work of the same hands. Simultaneously restraining and caressing, its almost all he can do to cling to the forearms that slide down the length of his form. Fingers trace the thickened skin of his smile-line scar; Hannibal’s own handiwork that he seems to be both admiring and apologizing for. He studies it for the briefest moment before he dips his head down and kisses the soft skin below his navel. Will finds it almost impossible not to squirm and his legs tangle more in the sheets. Until he’s stopped by strong hands that press at him. One on each of his hips with long fingers splayed at his sides, holding him down. Hannibal’s thumbs burn firm lines of heat down the sensitive skin just inside the sharp jut of bones. 

He can hardly bare to look at him, but neither can he look away. Hannibal’s eyes seem to flicker with sparks that seer directly into him. His lips curl into a grin before he slides his tongue across his teeth. Only then does his voice slip into the deep corners of Will's mind, “There are times when I look at you, I see the mirror of myself. And then there are times I stare in wonder, trying to understand what you are. I find you entirely exquisite...”

Will does have things that he could say, but finds his voice trapped in his throat . The sound he makes is neither a ghasp nor a holler but might be defined as both. All his words are taken from him by the sensation of slick-sweet heat drawing him in, engulfing him. It surrounds him almost entirely. His mouth is dry, his breath becomes more and more ragged, leaving his words to dissolve into a series of inarticulate moans. 

“Mmmm.” Hannibal actually hums around him. 

Whether it’s a tease or a trick or just an audible expression of approval, Will feels the sound moving through him. Up him. It resonates at his core and he struggles against the hands that still press him into the mattress because he wants more and more and more. 

All too quickly Will remembers that he's a goddamned liar. There's nothing quick at all about the pace he’s setting. Slow to almost agony, Hannibal takes his sweet time with great attention to detail. His clever hands and clever mouth excite and frustrate him all at once and Will's fingers twitch because he doesn't know what he's supposed to do with them. Right now, he doesn't even know his own name. 

He can only think of one.

It’s the only thing he can think of. The only thing that he knows. A single thought, a single word, a single point in his universe: Hannibal. 

Hannibal.

“Hannibal.”

It’s been the only tangible word to slip off his tongue; a wretched and desperate sound. A cry or a plea, a threat or a warning. Was this what being him felt like? Did he too have nothing a single thought crashing over him like a screaming, unavoidable sound? This insatiable, ravenous need?

Finally, Will knows what to do with his hands. Dull fingernails scratch across Hannibal’s scalp, pull at his hair as he begins to lose his battle. He’s not had a firm grasp of his sanity from the start.

But Hannibal doesn't stop. 

Not until he's a shaking, trembling, broken mess. Not until he's drained of all he has and left boneless, displayed across the mattress, still struggling to breathe. He’s not sure he could move if he had to, hell would have to drag him away. Every part of him feels heavy, sluggish and dreamy. And for a change, Hannibal looks as if he might feel the same. 

He sort of crawls and collapses into the large space beside him in absolute disarray. For an instant what almost looks like pain shows on his face, although it becomes a blurrier, dizzier view in quick enough time. Side by side they lay sedated and steadily spiraling, oblivious and uncaring of the waking world around them. Hannibal covers them both with a pale cotton sheet. Will doesn’t notice or remotely consider that the thread-count is cheap. 

No. That had taken every last thing that he had had. The only thing Will can do now is sleep.

He sleeps for 13 and a half hours, which is two and a half times more than he would get on any other given night, and knows that it’s going to take several days before even a single thing might feel normal again. He’s sleeps away the entire day until it comes back round to night again; 8:45 p.m. and Hannibal has prepared spinach and egg white omelets, more orange juice laced with painkillers and a tray of clean bandages and dressings. Will still isn’t 100% certain what state they’re technically in or how they came to be in this already furnished home, but there’s a neatly folded change of clothing laid at the foot of the bed just for him; soft cotton pants and a t-shirt that aren’t actually his size but will most certainly work. The shirt is a little too much effort for the moment, but he does make use of the pants. 

“Good evening,” Hannibal greets him from the window that has been pulled open to reveal a clouded night sky. He had been seated, a book in his hands, but he stands when he asks, “How did you sleep?”

“Like the dead,” Will tries a little humor. 

“Is that how you see yourself?” his question reads almost clinical: so tell me how does that make you feel? While he presents Will with his meal of breakfast for dinner for breakfast. 

Will accepts and shakes his head. No. “I tried. It didn’t take.”

Hannibal is almost proud of how little regret sours the music of his voice. Will speaks calm and clear and pleasant, for death did not bring him sorrow, bring him torment, bring him agony. Death brought Will Graham peace. Truth. Clarity. It had always been something he could understand. It was his instrument, his tool, his purpose. Death was part of who he was, and it had come to stay.


End file.
